Isobel Coleman: Videos of vicious beating of Egyptian woman have prompted protests
Women have been active in revolution but largely excluded from political process, she says
Coleman says the battle for women's rights in Egypt is a vital but difficult struggle

Editor's note: Isobel Coleman is the author of "Paradise Beneath Her Feet" and a senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

(CNN) -- The Egyptian revolution has a new, and
shocking, image: It's the Egyptian flag, but the eagle in the middle has
been replaced by a simple blue bra. The image refers to the recent,
savage beating of an abaya-clad female protester by Egyptian military
forces.

Graphic videos of the beating, captured on phones and uploaded to
YouTube and Facebook, have quickly proliferated. They show a limp woman
being dragged by her arms along the street. Her abaya is ripped open,
exposing her naked torso and blue bra. Security forces surround her,
many wielding batons. As the beating progresses, the guards hit her and
one even stomps on her. Photos of the man bringing his heavy boot down
on her bare stomach made the front page of newspapers around the world.

In response, thousands of women -- and men -- marched Tuesday in Cairo's Tahrir Square.
Observers say it was the largest demonstration of women in Egypt in
decades. Not since 1919, when women mobilized under the leadership of
feminist Hoda Sha'rawi in anti-colonial demonstrations against the
British have so many Egyptian women taken to the streets. (After
representing Egyptian women at the International Women Suffrage Alliance
in Rome in 1923, Sha'rawi returned to Cairo and very publicly removed
her veil.)